Linn County worker to receive $31,670 back pay

CEDAR RAPIDS - One Linn County administrative assistant is getting a windfall wage payment of $31,670 after county officials determined she worked overtime without pay.

The payment is based on two years of unpaid overtime, which Lisa Powell, the county's human resources director, said Wednesday amounted to about two hours a day of overtime work plus additional overtime hours worked during evening meetings and on extra duties.

Kim Honn, who earns $23.39 an hour as an administrative assistant at Linn County Public Health, is the recipient of the payment.

Powell said the pay issue came to light after the director at Public Health sought a clarification of Honn's duties as established by a previous director.

She said Honn's job and six other county administrative assistants or secretaries' jobs come with a 'confidential” status, as do positions of six other county administrative assistants or secretaries who work for elected officials or department heads, and are excluded from bargaining units.

The pay issue for Honn centered around confusion over whether she was an hourly worker or a salaried one and part of the management team at Public Health, Powell said.

She said Honn is an hourly employee but was being paid as if she was a salaried management employee not entitled to overtime.

Powell said she has investigated the county's other similarly positioned administrative assistants and secretaries and found that the others have been working as hourly employees and have not accrued unpaid overtime.

She called Honn 'an excellent employee (and) very dedicated.”

'We just needed to fix a problem.” Powell said. 'We're not supposed to work hourly employees more than they should be working without compensating them.”

Linn Supervisors Lu Barron and Brent Oleson on Wednesday said that Powell analyzed Honn's work hours over two years to verify that the $31,670 wage payment to her is justified. The Board of Supervisors approved the payment Wednesday.

In September, the supervisors also approved the payment of $223,869 in back pay to four sheriff's deputies that resulted from confusion about overtime pay for deputies who work 24-hour shifts on the rescue squad.

The Sheriff's Department had paid deputies for 16 hours of the 24-hour shift and also would pay for hours on the shift after 16 hours if the deputies were called out.

However,The department learned it should have been paying deputies on the rescue squad for 16 hours of regular time and eight hours of overtime in each 24-hour shift, instead of paying for 16 hours plus any additional time if the deputies were called out.